Laments about the state of education are arguably as old as education is, or close to it. And they've always been a waste of time.
That's because knowledge isn't bestowed on us as much as it's created. The Wright Brothers didn't attend college, but it wouldn't matter if they had. They invented aviation. And Jeff Bezos invented e-commerce.
Tomorrow's billionaires and trillionaires won't be taught to invent the future, but their curiosity and dissatisfaction with how things are done will invent the future just the same. Education is an effect of economic progress, and it's about economic progress, while most certainly not being a driver of it.
The folly of being taught how to be smart or innovative came to mind a lot while reading Samuel Graydon's excellent 2023 book, Einstein In Time and Space: A Life In 99 Particles. It's evident that Einstein would agree about education nostalgists wasting their time. Or as they say in sports, you can't coach speed or height.
Einstein was born smart and curious, among other positive attributes. Upon being given a pocket compass by his well-to-do German father, Einstein realized that "something deeply hidden had to be behind things." Graydon writes that Einstein "wanted to try to understand" the deeply hidden. And he did.
Einstein created brilliance, as opposed to being taught to be brilliant. This isn't to say he wasn't educated, but it is to say that Einstein was skeptical about education. How could he not be when he knew so much worth knowing wasn't yet known?
Einstein viewed his grade school teachers at Luitpold-Gymnasium as "lieutenants." They weren't teaching, rather they were telling students what to memorize so that they could subsequently regurgitate what they'd been told. Einstein saw through the conceit.
Rather than memorize what the "lieutenants" told him, Einstein questioned everything, including religion. He believed "that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true," and that much else that was taught couldn't be taken seriously either. Einstein concluded that "youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies." Graydon adds that Einstein would forever be "hostile toward every kind of authority and dogma." The people who invent the future are the ultimate skeptics. As one friend put it to Einstein, "You'll never let yourself be told anything."
It's interesting to think about Einstein if he were still alive today. What, for instance, would he think of economics? The bet here is that he would say it's religion meant to fit the conceit of the economists. In Einstein's own words, "with mathematics one can prove anything." Precisely, and a rather pithy knock on economics even though Einstein wasn't thinking about economics when he said it. Except that it doesn't matter. Math is used to "prove" all sorts of things, including ridiculous economic notions. About psychoanalysis, Einstein (who counted Freud among his many friends) described it as "fraudulent science."
When Einstein himself finally became a professor after endless rejections ("I will soon have honored every physicist from the North Sea to the southern tip of Italy with my offer."), he quipped that "now I too am an official member of the guild of whores." Fascinating about what preceded his hire is that even high schools were rejecting this most live of minds.
Arguably most notable about Einstein's belated entrance into the academic world that he disdained is that he didn't become what he thought so little of. As opposed to conveying the known to students eager to memorize it, Graydon writes that Einstein showed up to the University of Zurich with "just a strip of paper the size of a visiting card crammed with scribbles and scrawls." Einstein would teach what he himself was learning, as in his students would "watch Einstein develop his ideas during the lecture."
All of which requires a quick pause. While Einstein was one of the deepest of deep thinkers, Graydon's book is thankfully not or even mostly about obscure scientific thoughts, or equations like E=MC2. It's a lot more fun. It's 99 very brief chapters that offer a snapshot of Einstein's life and times.
At the same time, relativity is addressed, albeit in a way that the non-scientific will enjoy. Graydon acknowledges that even Einstein struggled to explain the theory that he was most known for, and that it "simply fell out of his work." Look back two paragraphs to fully embrace the meaning of how Einstein discovered what Graydon describes as "the most famous equation in all of science." Work was learning, and the path to knowledge creation.
Again, Einstein wasn't instructed on relativity as much as his feverish search for the unknown led him to it. But even then it's apparent that Einstein himself couldn't quite grasp or properly convey the meaning of what he happened upon. Which humanizes him.
"I do not understand it myself anymore." That's what Einstein said after mathematicians began to interpret his theory. About the comment, or lament, the not-so-insightful speculation here is that his disciples' understanding of relativity was inversely proportional to his own understanding of what he discovered. And in not understanding it, they were perverting it to the point of non-recognition. Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, arguably put it best about Einstein and his theory of relativity after they crossed the Atlantic together on a cruise: "Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and by the time we arrived I was fully convinced he understands it."
Ok, so how exactly did Einstein explain relativity? At least one explanation helps to vivify Einstein the person, someone Graydon describes as "quick and funny." For his longtime assistant, Helen Dukas, who made clear that she wouldn't work for Einstein if it meant she had to understand physics, Einstein explained relativity this way: "An hour sitting with a pretty girl, passes like a minute; but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour - that's relativity."
When Einstein ultimately won the Nobel Prize, Graydon reports that he'd already been nominated 62 times previously. Who knew?
Which brings up not a critique of the book as much as an admission of how little this reviewer knew or knows about Einstein. Since there's little knowledge, there's little understanding of how Einstein became so famous. But famous he became. Just as letters reached John D. Rockefeller without an address, so did letters addressed, "Professor Albert Einstein, Europe" reach Einstein. It's all pretty fascinating that someone possessing such obscure knowledge could have become such a household name. The book addresses the latter as more of a fait acompli than a process, which is understandable. Again, it's not a biography (though Graydon recommends several in his acknowledgments) as much as it's "99 particles." And they're great.
They once again reveal the person beyond the genius, someone who would have been a great conversation about all sorts of things. Einstein observed early on that Adolf Hitler was "living on the empty stomach of Germany," but as time passed the pacifist felt compelled to warn no less than Winston Churchill that Hitler was, in the words of Graydon, "fixed on war and already secretly preparing for it." On the matter of Israel, Einstein was one of the original anti-Zionists. In his words, "my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders."
Einstein was plainly deep in thought about many things beyond math and science as the above attests, after which it's apparent that he was very funny. As he put it about death, "it is tasteless to prolong life artificially." What an interesting man, what an interesting life. What a great job Samuel Graydon has done in providing readers with a very real sense of one of the most remarkable people to ever live.